11–20 of 30 posts
"If hooking some monkey's testicles up to a car battery can save a kid from dying of cancer in ten years, I've got two things to say: the red is the positive, and the black is the negative." - David Spade, paraphrased badly
You know, I honestly don’t care. It’s probably tens to hundreds of monkeys at the most, they’re probably pumped full of drugs so they don’t feel the pain during implantation and I’m sick of blocking any sort of progress in anything due to ethical concerns. We literally kill millions of cows a day and we’re okay with it, let’s extend some of that understanding to technological progress as well.
Something being new doesn't mean it's progress
Lead paint was progress
Asbestos was progress
Freon was progress
> We literally kill millions of cows a day and we’re okay with it,
You might, I'm not, millions of people aren't
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, ethics man. What a pain. Why are we using monkeys anyway when we could just use prisoners and homeless people? Double-score, scientific progress and decreasing the homelessness and prison problem.
He does have a point about food animals though. We are perfectly ok with treating them horribly their whole lives to save few cents on the costs (not to mention killing them at all). Yet we pretend to be shocked when something that makes us feel squeamish happens. And then go right back to chewing on that steak...
People can make a choice for themselves, most don't because deep down they don't give a fuck, many do though
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, ethics man. What a pain. Why are we using monkeys anyway when we could just use prisoners and homeless people? Double-score, scientific progress and decreasing the homelessness and prison problem.
He does have a point about food animals though. We are perfectly ok with treating them horribly their whole lives to save few cents on the costs (not to mention killing them at all). Yet we pretend to be shocked when something that makes us feel squeamish happens. And then go right back to chewing on that steak...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, ethics man. What a pain. Why are we using monkeys anyway when we could just use prisoners and homeless people? Double-score, scientific progress and decreasing the homelessness and prison problem.
He does have a point about food animals though. We are perfectly ok with treating them horribly their whole lives to save few cents on the costs (not to mention killing them at all). Yet we pretend to be shocked when something that makes us feel squeamish happens. And then go right back to chewing on that steak...
While chickens are dumb, evil animals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He does have a point about food animals though. We are perfectly ok with treating them horribly their whole lives to save few cents on the costs (not to mention killing them at all). Yet we pretend to be shocked when something that makes us feel squeamish happens. And then go right back to chewing on that steak...
> He does have a point about food animals though. People can make a choice for themselves, most don't because deep down they don't give a fuck, many do though
There’s a reason a bunch of states passed laws making it illegal to photograph the warehouses where these animals are raised.
If there was a transparency law, that required an accurate picture of the location where the animals whose meat is being sold was raised to be stuck on the packaging it wouldn’t be very long before the more inhumane (or more accurately, the more inhumane looking) meat sources would become unprofitable.
Because most people are willing to pay a little bit more if they fully understand the ethical consequences. Actually, what is more likely to happen is that many people would eat meat less frequently, opting for more plant based sources of protein and then spend the extra money needed for the more humane meat when they wanted meat itself.
"If hooking some monkey's testicles up to a car battery can save a kid from dying of cancer in ten years, I've got two things to say: the red is the positive, and the black is the negative." - David Spade, paraphrased badly
What if you replaced "save a kid from dying of cancer in ten years" by "having an implant that lets you buy toilet paper on amazon if you blink twice", because we all know that's where we're going to end up
But seriously, you're going to take research into actual human-machine interfaces and boil them down to "implant that lets you buy toilet paper by blinking"? I mean maybe the entire field of computing goes ethically bankrupt, even if the walled gardens and coercive algorithms win forever, the concept of a computer as a "bicycle for the mind" falling to the wayside as computers become only used as a tool for control. Assuming that you have no faith that anyone will ever use it to build a "bicycle for the mind".
Even if you assume that it will mostly be used for Evil commercially it can still be used for dumb prosthetics and increase the quality of life for a lot of people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you replaced "save a kid from dying of cancer in ten years" by "having an implant that lets you buy toilet paper on amazon if you blink twice", because we all know that's where we're going to end up
Listen, no one is going to defend these excesses of capitalism, the tracking the increasingly user hostile designs, the anti-competitive consolidation and rent seeking behavior. But seriously, you're going to take research into actual human-machine interfaces and boil them down to "implant that lets you buy toilet paper by blinking"? I mean maybe the entire field of computing goes ethically bankrupt, even if the wall…
Who and how ?
Virtually every megacorp is busy showing you ads or taking your money when you buy the shit you saw in their ads. Everything has been corrupted, no one can assume good faith anymore
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’m sick of blocking any sort of progress in anything due to ethical concerns. Wish granted. Please, hop up on the operating table. We're not asking. Thank you, by the way, for the ongoing funding for our project that we've arranged to have diverted from your pay from your employer. Now, we're going to test the write functionality of Neuralink. We'll know it's working, because when it is, you'll stop screaming. Mora…
Ethics can’t be black and white. There has to be a reasonable middle ground and clearly human testing is way, way past what’s acceptable. You can call it a slippery slope but everything is and it’s the reason we have laws to keep things sane.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/us/california-bees-fish-court...
https://www.amazon.com/Emergency-Sasquatch-Ordinance-Actuall...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anti-jewis...
Oh yes. It's the laws that will save us, and keep everything sane. /s
Let's try this again shall we? Ethics and morality are a priori to any system of legalistic systemitization, not the other way around. You will not find a law that that "stealing is okay". You will find law that goes of it's way to decree that X is not (something morally/ethically unconscionable, but really something else).
>You can call it a slippery slope
It isn't. It's an incontrovertible case of anthropocentric thinking with a dash of self-referential inconsistency, followed by an appeal to pragmatism, stemming from a desire for nearer-term gratification at the expense of normalization of deviance/Overton window shifting.
Slippery slope/heap fallacy my ass. You aren't getting out of this with "I'm just going to disengage with a platitude." You do you, but don't delude yourself into thinking there is some inherent virtue in lowering the bar and managing to traverse the hurdle when someone else is paying the price for you not being capable of being bothered to deal with things the right way.